1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to communications between a computing device and a controller held in a hand of a user, and more specifically to using the communications between the computing device and the controller to determine the location of the controller in a three-dimensional space.
2. Description of the Related Art
The video game industry has seen many changes over the years. As computing power has expanded, developers of video games have likewise created game software that takes advantage of these increases in computing power. To this end, video game developers have been coding games that incorporate sophisticated operations and mathematics to produce a very realistic game experience.
Example gaming platforms, may be the Sony Playstation®, Sony Playstation2® (PS2), and Sony Playstation3® (PS3), each of which is sold in the form of a game console. As is well known, the game console is designed to connect to a monitor (usually a television) and enable user interaction through handheld controllers. The game console is designed with specialized processing hardware, including a CPU, a graphics synthesizer for processing intensive graphics operations, a vector unit for performing geometry transformations, and other glue hardware, firmware, and software. The game console is further designed with an optical disc tray for receiving game compact discs for local play through the game console. Online gaming is also possible, where a user can interactively play against or with other users over the Internet.
As game complexity continues to intrigue players, game and hardware manufacturers have continued to innovate to enable additional interactivity and computer programs.
A growing trend in the computer gaming industry is to develop games that increase the interaction between user and the gaming system. One way of accomplishing a richer interactive experience is to use wireless game controllers whose movement is tracked by the gaming system in order to track the player's movements and use these movements as inputs for the game. Generally speaking, gesture input refers to having an electronic device such as a computing system, video game console, smart appliance, etc., react to some gesture captured by a video camera that tracks an object.
However, current object tracking suffers in capture accuracy. This problem arises because conventional image analysis can only produce somewhat reliable measurements of the location of the user in two dimensions. Determining the distance between the camera and the object being tracked is difficult, as the slight changes in shape due to movement towards or away from the camera do not provide enough information to reliably calculate distances between the camera and the controller. In laboratory settings, some have utilized a depth sensing device. However, these depth sensing devices rely on two-way bounce back, which attempt to outline the contours of certain images from light that is reflected off of objects placed in front of such devices. Although such devices have certain applications, their application to gaming is somewhat limited, due to expense, complexity and extra processing required to combine depth data with two-dimensional image data. Consequently, depth data integration with interactive game controllers has continued to lag, produced less than desired results, and has not been widely accepted outside of the laboratory.
It is within this context that embodiments of the invention arise.